


No Light That Falls on Earth

by the_glow_worm



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blood Drinking, Intoxicated Confessions of Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Vampires, vampire keith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 22:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12242112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: When Shiro discovers Keith in an abandoned corridor, blood dripping from his fangs, he realizes that he has stumbled into the secret Keith has kept from him all along. Now, Shiro must do whatever it takes to slake Keith's hunger.





	No Light That Falls on Earth

There were noises coming from the corridor where only the dead ought to have been. Shiro pressed instantly against the wall of the Galra battleship, straining his ears. Whatever it was, it was around the corner, and it was alive; a low, susurrating murmur that was disturbingly organic.

 

He had no reason to be nervous. It was probably the last breaths of some poor, dying Galra soldier. So he told himself; but something within him, an instinct older than human civilization, woke at the sound. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood up like the hackles of a dog. Only his military training kept him going, one foot after another, silently. He turned the corner.

 

At first he couldn't make sense of what he saw. A Galra soldier, moaning lowly, barely even conscious, and a dark figure hunched over him, lips pressed to his neck, cradling the dying soldier like a lover. Shiro watched a dark trickle trace down the length of the soldier's neck and fall in slow motion to the floor.

 

It was like a catalyst. The blood on the floor made it real. Awake, shocked, Shiro gasped out—

 

"Keith!"

 

The figure started back, springing on all fours like an animal. The soldier slipped to the ground. Shiro stared at him, at the fading light of euphoria in his eyes, and then up at the pale face of the other. He had been right. It was _him_. His chest was too tight.

 

"Keith," Shiro said again, helplessly.

 

Keith leapt to his feet and fled. Shiro didn't even think about it. He chased after.

 

They raced through the empty halls of the Galra battleship, purple light flickering at their feet. Shiro's shouts echoed back at them, a ghostly whisper of _Keith, Keith, stop_ , but Keith, silent, did not stop. He threw himself around a corner. By the time Shiro caught up, he had disappeared.

 

Shiro turned in a frantic circle, but there was no sign of him. Where could Keith have gone? Where would he want to go? Shiro closed his eyes. Think, he ordered himself sternly, but his brain was flooded with ghastly afterimages of what he had seen only a moment before. He could not seem to think of anything else. Keith, pale beneath the dark hair that fell over his face, entwined with the limp, gasping body of the Galra soldier, nuzzling at his neck like a tender lover; Keith and the tongue that lapped eagerly at the trickle of blood from the soldier's neck, the twin fangs that emerged from his mouth, the look of avid hunger on his face. His mind almost refused to fathom it. It didn't make sense. He _knew_ Keith. His best friend, his successor, the best pilot he'd ever trained, not—

 

Shiro's eyes snapped open. He knew where Keith was. He sprinted along the corridors, skidding around corners, his heart pumping with desperation. Understanding could wait. If he couldn’t stop Keith in time—

 

He burst into the hangar bay at last, panting. Keith—Keith—where was Keith? Shiro was nearly blind was panic. But there—at the other end of the hangar bay, a blur of motion. Keith was climbing into a speeder.

 

“No!”

 

It escaped him without conscious thought. Shiro moved before the nose of the speeder; between it and the closed hangar doors, blocking his path to escape. He could see Keith’s face through the glass, blurred and fractured with reflected light, so that he looked like a ghostly image of himself. But Shiro knew him. What he had seen could not change that. Keith was saying something to him through the glass, his mouth moving without sound. Shiro stood his ground.

 

“You want to leave? Fine,” said Shiro. “But you’ll have to send me into hard vacuum first. You’re not running away without going through me.”

 

There was silence in the hangar bay. The moment dragged on forever, but Shiro did not take his eyes off the image of Keith’s face. It was impossible to know what he was thinking; all Shiro knew was that he couldn’t let him leave. They couldn’t be separated again. He felt his blood pounding this truth into his ears. Shiro could not let Keith be separated from him ever again.

 

Keith was trembling when he finally, slowly, climbed out of the speeder. Shiro went to him. There was still blood on his mouth, he saw; it made his lips dark. He could not help but stare. It had been real, not some feverish dream; the blood on Keith’s lips was tangible proof of what he had seen.

 

“Keith—”

 

“Shiro, _please_ —”

 

“What were you _doing_? You—his blood—and your _teeth_ —”

 

Keith couldn’t look at him.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I—I—” He took a stuttering breath. “Shiro, I swear I’ve never done that before. I tried not to. I didn’t want to. Shiro, please, believe me, I didn’t. I wouldn’t. But I couldn’t take it. I was—I was so _hungry_.”

 

Shiro swallowed hard.

 

“You’re—you’re a—” He couldn’t name it. They had stories about this, back on Earth; faintly ridiculous campfire stories and folktales that no one believed anymore, movies that only romantics went to see. But this was no campfire story. Keith was in front of him, shaking from head to toe. It was the truth.

 

“I was bitten on Earth,” said Keith. His voice was low, flat, deaden, an abrupt contrast to the panicked flow of words that had come from him earlier. “It was after I was kicked out of Garrison. A stranger who saw something in me. He made me drink his blood, and do—other things. He said that it would come naturally to me. That the sunlight that fell on earth was fatal to us. I didn’t believe him at first. It came on so slowly.”

 

“And then—you—changed?” Shiro hated how awkward and halting his own voice was. This was Keith. His best friend. He took a breath.

 

“You don’t have to tell me any of this,” he said, with sudden decision. “I don’t care. Whatever this is, you’re still you.”

 

Keith looked at him for the first time.

 

“Then what are you going to tell the team,” he asked, measured, “when I’m gone?”

 

Shiro felt something clench in his chest. “What?” he said blankly. “What?”

 

“You can’t want me leading the team anymore, now that you know what I am.” Keith said it as if it was obvious. “How could you? It was bad enough that I hid it from you in the first place. How could you possibly expect me to lead _anyone_ when I could turn on any of you in any second?”

 

“But you haven’t,” said Shiro, trying to be patient over the panicked thrumming of his heart. “And you won’t. I know you.”

 

“You don’t understand!” Keith exploded. His words echoed off the walls of the hangar bay. “I would, Shiro. I would. The hunger keeps on growing inside me. I can’t stop it, it’s like a tumor I can’t cut out, and I can’t control it. Every time someone gets wounded, every time Lance cuts himself shaving, every time someone has a _papercut_ , I, I smell it. And it makes me _hungry_ , Shiro.” There was something wild in his eyes. “The team—the team would never look at me the same way again.”

 

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Shiro, after a moment. “They wouldn’t.”

 

As Keith looked at him, surprise and hurt clearly visible in his face, Shiro went on. “Lance would be over the moon. Can you imagine? All of the worst Dracula jokes in the world. You’d have no defense. He’d hold a themed movie night and make everyone wear plastic fangs. Pidge would be after you with a test tube, trying to figure out what it is about the photons from a mid-size yellow dwarf that’s fatal to you. Hunk will take any excuse to introduce us to blood sausage, believe me. And Allura? As far as she knows, it might as well be normal for humans to drink blood.” He tried a smile. “Believe me, Keith. We’d still be your team.” He stepped forward, closing the remaining distance between them, and put his hands on Keith’s shoulders. They were shaking, and Shiro looked down at him, concerned. The tips of Keith’s hair was brushing against his lips.

 

“Unbelievable,” said Keith, his voice choked with mirth. “You’re unbelievable.” And he looked up at him, revealing the expression on his face.

 

Keith was _laughing_. Shiro felt, at once, enormously relieved and yet obscurely offended.

 

“How am I the unbelievable one?” he demanded. “You’re a vampire!”

 

It sounded absurd when he said it out loud, and they both doubled over with laughter. Keith was wheezing so hard that it took him several attempts to make out his joke.

 

“I…I _vant_ to _drink_ your _blood_ ,” Keith said, finally. It was the worst telegraphed joke in the world, but the way Keith laughed at his own joke made it hilarious. Shiro howled with laughter. Keith collapsed onto the floor, still laughing, and Shiro couldn’t resist the temptation to join him there. They lay on their backs in the middle of the hangar bay, looking at the wings and noses of the Galra speeders above them. Once he’d feared them more than anything else. Now he knew better.

 

Keith’s shoulder was cool against his. Had Keith always run cold? Shiro couldn’t remember. He shifted an arm around him, trying to give him the heat of his body. Keith stiffened, and then relaxed.

 

“We won’t tell the team right away,” said Shiro. “If that’s easier for you. I won’t tell your secret. But Keith—” And Keith turned to look at him, eyes still bright with laughter— “It doesn’t make a difference to me, Keith. It doesn’t. Just—don’t go anywhere, okay?”

 

Keith studied the lines of his face. Shiro wished, as he often did, that he knew what he was thinking.

 

"I'll try," he said, finally, and offered a faint smile.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith knew it was only a matter of time. Shiro could say what he liked, but the whisper in his blood was stronger. The hunger was only growing, and with it, temptation.

 

It would be easy, he thought. Voltron and the Blades of Mamora were taking more Galra battlecruisers by the day. He might sneak off to feast on dead and dying soldiers and be back before the rest of the team even noticed. He even thought, sometimes, that Shiro might be purposely giving him opportunity to do it.

 

But he hadn’t; hadn’t given in to the hunger, as he had once before, hadn’t fed since Shiro had caught him. If Keith could figure out how, he’d never feed again. He’d rather die than let Shiro see him like that again, hunched over someone like a feasting animal while their blood poured down his throat.

 

He held on to that thought, during those times when he felt neither cold nor weariness; days on ice planets, with Pidge wondering out loud how Keith could stand to be without a jacket, nights wide awake from hunger, but not feeling tired from the loss of sleep. Ordinary food began to repulse him; Keith only put as much into his mouth as he could stand, to avoid suspicion, and chewed slowly, that he might not choke on it. It was ashes in his mouth, and his longing for blood was never stronger than when he had to pretend at his lost humanity at the dinner table. Tonight, for instance. Lance and Allura were bickering across the table, with Coran playing referee, and Pidge and Hunk tinkering with some latest invention, and Keith sat, jaw clenched against the fangs that ached to extend outwards, cutting his food into smaller and smaller pieces.

 

They would know soon. It seemed impossible that they would not. A deep, unshakable feeling of dread had settled into his bones and made him oddly calm. He would slip up, sooner or later, and they would know. His image in the mirror had already begun to look insubstantial. Surely they couldn’t fail to notice that.

 

He stabbed the stalk of some sort of vegetable, native to the last planet they had visited, and carefully sliced off a tiny piece from it, inspected the thin veins and capillaries that ran through it. Colors were fading from his vision, everything turning a nondescript grey; he could not tell whether it was green, as it would have been on Earth, or some alien hue. Keith was listening to the sound of his teammates’ voices as they talked and laughed without him. It didn’t take much of a stretch to imagine that this was what they would sound like when he was gone; cheerful, safe, and infinitely better off without the danger lurking in their midst.

 

It was then that he realized that one voice was silent. Shiro wasn't talking any more than Keith was. His eyes snapped up from his plate.

 

Shiro was watching him. He didn’t flinch back when Keith met his gaze, either; only held it with the same cool, deep-burning intensity that had drawn Keith to him back at Garrison. How long had he been watching? There was no way to know. Keith tensed his jaw. Defiantly, and without looking away from Shiro, he stabbed a pale grey leaf and brought it to his lips.

 

Gorge began to rise in his throat as soon as it hit his tongue, his stomach churning at the foulness of the flavor. Keith clenched his jaw against it, trying to force the morsel down his throat, but his entire body was in revolt. A shudder ran down his spine. His shoulders clenched, fingers making claws around the tablecloth as he tried again to force it down. This time he got as far as swallowing before a convulsive heave ran through him.

 

The others had noticed. Keith could feel their glances moving towards him, like magnifying glasses held over a struggling ant.

 

“Are you okay, man?” asked Hunk. The concern in his voice was a stinging reminder of all he no longer had a right to. Keith couldn’t hold it back any longer. He spat, clearing his mouth, and left the table.

 

Shiro followed him out of the room and down the hallway.

 

“Keith—”

 

“Don’t.” He shrugged off the hand that landed on his shoulder. Shiro, seemingly unbothered, came up beside him, doggedly keeping up with Keith’s fast pace.

 

"You're hungry, aren't you?" he demanded.

 

"No!" said Keith sharply. "I told you, I don't need it—"

 

"We both know that's not true!"

 

"Either way, you don't have to worry about it." His voice came out coldly, and Shiro sucked in a low, quick breath.

 

"How can you say that?" he demanded.

 

They had reached Keith's quarters. Keith turned on Shiro, glaring.

 

"Because it's none of your business!" he snapped. "Unless you really want a fucking report every time I suck someone dry.”

 

“Except you’re not,” said Shiro. “Are you?”

 

Keith stiffened with one foot in his door, and Shiro unceremoniously pushed him the rest of the way in, shutting the door behind them.

 

“What the hell—”

 

The words choked to a stop in his throat. Quick as thought, Shiro had pulled a penknife out of his pocket. Before Keith could react, he nicked his own thumb.

 

Blood, fresh blood, came welling out of the cut, and with it came the smell; rich, metallic, cloying—utterly intoxicating. He could see every follicle, every capillary that ran under the skin, and the slow hot trickle of life-giving liquid that had rolled onto the palm. Keith was suddenly aware of nothing except the red pulse of life in Shiro’s hand, and the immensity of his own hunger. Shiro might as well have been the only light in a darkened room.

 

He wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but he was; he could not have stopped himself, except that he could have. Keith sank to his knees, and Shiro tipped his hand to his mouth and let him drink. He lapped at Shiro’s fingers, thirsty beyond imagining, and with every swallow he felt life thunder through him. The world was in color again, but every color was red; it was all he had eyes for. His tongue swirled over Shiro’s knuckles, into the crevices between his fingers, probing everywhere for blood. Shiro sucked in a breath as his tongue ran over the sensitive palm.

 

At last he found the cut on the pad of his thumb and sucked, but the trickle of blood had already come to nearly a halt. Keith ran his tongue over it anyway, desperate for more. His fangs had already unsheathed in his mouth. If he could only bite—sink in his teeth—there would be more than enough blood for him—

 

 _No_. Keith threw himself backwards, horrified by the thought. He was panting as he scrambled up to his feet. For a moment he couldn’t find any words.

 

“You—you let me—why would you—”

 

Keith was shaking, his eyes fixed on the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Shiro.

 

“Keith,” said Shiro. “You need this, don’t you?”

 

His mouth formed a reflexive denial, but he could not get the words out. A single taste of blood had made him more alive than he’d felt in days.

 

“Keith,” said Shiro again, and the strange note in his voice made Keith look up at him.

 

Shiro had tilted his head to one side, exposing the clean unblemished expanse of his neck. Keith could see the blood pounding within his veins, a thin beautiful tracery beneath his skin. He was offering himself.

 

"I can't," said Keith desperately, and heard the lie in his own voice. He was coming closer anyway, unable to help himself. The taste of Shiro's blood in his mouth was a more desperate hunger than any he had felt before.

 

He would not bite, he rationalized to himself, inching ever nearer. He would only come closer to Shiro; to breathe in of his intoxicating scent, to warm himself in the heat of his body.

 

Shiro didn’t flee when Keith came near again, as he had half hoped and half dreaded. Despite himself Keith folded himself into the warmth of Shiro’s body, nosing instinctively at his neck. Strong arms wrapped around him and held him against Shiro’s chest. Keith could hear the heart beating, strong and quick and steady, like the drumming of a familiar song. Keith breathed in slowly, almost choking. The urge to bite was overwhelming.

 

Without volition his tongue flicked out and licked at the spot between jaw and neck. Shiro shivered, but didn’t move. Keith closed his eyes, reveling in the sweet taste of the skin, thin enough there that he could almost smell the blood through it. He couldn’t stand it any longer.

 

“Shiro,” he said, barely daring to breathe his name. “Shiro, are you sure—”

 

“Let me help you for once, Keith,” said Shiro, steady as ever. “It’s okay,” he went on, after a moment, when Keith didn’t move. “I know you’d never hurt me.”

 

Keith could think of a thousand different things to say to that, but his rising hunger was stronger than any of them. He closed his eyes and let himself submit to it.

 

Shiro gasped, once, as Keith’s fangs pierced his neck. Keith went still at the sound, stomach clenched with dread; then the heady rush of blood filled his mouth, and he forgot anything else. He drank.

 

It was as good as the first time, with the Galra soldier; better, even, because this was Shiro, whose scent was almost as familiar to him as his own. Empty of thought, Keith pressed closer to him; unexpectedly Shiro staggered backwards, his back hitting the wall. Blood was rushing down Keith’s throat, warm and metallic and vital; he clutched at Shiro’s shoulders, wanting _more._ Shiro let out a noise that was half-whimper, half groan. Somehow the balance had shifted; Keith was no longer the one being held. Shiro was wilting, weight collapsing against the wall and the circle of Keith’s arms, while Keith could feel himself getting stronger by the minute.

 

Shiro shuddered in his arms.

 

“I—I—” He shivered and got no further. “Keith,” he whispered instead, and fell silent.

 

Keith was lost in the red abyss, drowning in his own slaked hunger, but Shiro’s voice somehow filtered down into the depths. Something like sanity whispered at him to let go, and Keith did, drawing back his fangs, somehow knowing by instinct to lick over the pinprick wounds to help them heal. No blood escaped, no stain or mark marred the length of Shiro’s neck, but still Shiro collapsed against him, boneless. His skin was as pale as the metal of his arm.

 

“Oh god,” said Keith. Nausea was rising overwhelmingly within him. Shiro was frighteningly light in his arms, almost insubstantial. What had he done? How could he have been so stupid, to give in to his hunger, to the desperate thirst—he should have starved first, or stepped into the sunlight that fell on earth.

 

Shiro’s head lolled forward against his shoulder, and Keith nearly collapsed with relief to find him breathing, slowly but steadily, against the side of his neck. He sucked in huge lungfuls of air, trembling. God. For a moment he'd thought—really thought—

 

Resolutely not thinking beyond the present moment, he shifted Shiro in his arms and carried him to his cot in the corner. With shaking hands he laid him out. As he reached out to straighten his shoulders, Shiro's eyes fluttered open. His gaze fixed on Keith, but there was something strangely unfocused about it.

 

"Keith," he said. His hand rose up and cupped his cheek. Keith saw him preparing to rise.

 

"I think you should stay down," said Keith worriedly. He leaned over Shiro, gently pressing a hand into his shoulder to keep him down against the mattress. Shiro strained upwards against it, and Keith leaned further forward to look into his face.

 

It was then that Shiro kissed him.

 

The kiss caught him by surprise. With Keith's hand still pressing down onto his shoulder, Shiro could not quite reach him fully; Keith felt the kiss as only a brushing touch across his lips, brief but charged with electricity.

 

He jerked back, startled.

 

“Did you just—?” Keith refused to dare to believe it, but his body had already come to his own conclusion. His heart was beating like a bird against his chest. Shiro’s eyes travelled over his face, making Keith’s cheeks grow warm. Shiro himself was already flushed, clothes disheveled where Keith had pawed at his neck, mouth open and panting. Keith had rarely seen him so undone.

 

“Kiss me,” he said raggedly. “I want you to touch me—touch me everywhere—kiss me, bite me, I don’t care—”

 

His hands reached out, and Keith flinched back from them.

 

Shiro would never have said such a thing, Keith thought, not to _him_ ; the realization sat in his stomach heavily, as if Shiro’s blood was poison inside him.

 

Beneath him on the narrow bed, Shiro continued to ramble. His words were slurred, eyes foggy and unfocused. Could it have been the blood loss? No, Keith realized, with a sickening lurch in his stomach. _He_ , Keith, must have done something to him.

 

"Shiro, you're—you’re not in your right mind—”

 

"I know," he panted. "You drive me crazy, Keith, you always have. I love you, I need you—" Shiro strained for him, his eyes beseeching.

 

Keith was stronger, flushed with fresh blood—Shiro’s blood. It was easy to hold him down against the bed; less easy to shut his ears. Shiro confessed love to him a dozen ways; earnestly, passionately, in languages Keith had no idea he even spoke.

 

“I think I’ve loved you since we met in Garrison,” said Shiro, murmuring. His eyes were drifting shut, so Keith couldn’t tell by his pupils what his state of mind was. “But you were always so careful, so private…How could I know what you felt? I wish…I wish I knew now…”

 

“Please, Shiro,” said Keith. He was shaking. Each word had clawed into his chest and seemed to stay there. “Please stop talking. I know you don’t mean this.”

 

“Keith,” said Shiro again. His voice was fading out, like a song playing on an old radio. His breathing evened out. In a few moments, he was asleep. Keith didn’t dare to move. He took one shaking breath, and then another, and put his face into his hands.

 

That wasn’t the Shiro he knew. Keith was sure of it. What had he done to him?

 

Maybe it was a normal side effect. Maybe nothing was wrong. Keith squeezed shut his eyes, tried to think back to when he was bitten. He had been lured out into the desert, a handsome stranger beckoning to him from across the moonlit expanse. For a moment Keith thought he had seen someone else, someone impossible; he had followed.

 

The next he remembered was being held firmly against a taut chest, powerless against the teeth that sank into his skin. Keith remembered how he had lost even the power to struggle against the inexorable arm that held him, some lassitude seeping into his bones. He could only stare groggily at the sky above, the stars blazing, and then blurring, in his vision. There was a terrible longing in him to fly into those stars, to seek and to find; his body had felt so alive with warmth and desire. Perhaps he, too, had acted as Shiro had, just now; slurring and delirious. What could have had this effect? Something in his saliva?

 

An evolutionary advantage, Keith realized. Something to make the prey love the predator. Nothing real.

 

A small noise, a change in the sound of Shiro’s breathing, made him instantly alert. Shiro was coming awake. His eyes opened. Keith tensed, but they only blinked once or twice, bleary and confused.

 

“Keith?” said Shiro. “What—what happened? Why am I on this bed?”

 

“You don’t remember?” said Keith, dazed.

 

“It’s a little murky,” Shiro admitted. “I remember up until you—” he hesitated, gesturing vaguely towards his neck. “And then it’s just blurry. We were talking, I think, but—I can’t remember what I was saying. I felt—” he cut himself off with a flush. “I guess there’s some kind of euphoriac in your saliva?”

 

Keith could only manage a nod.

 

“Makes sense,” said Shiro, with a strained laugh. “I mean, that explains it.”

 

“Yes,” said Keith hollowly. “It explains everything.”

 

Something about the sound of his voice caught Shiro’s attention. He looked up into his face, his gaze clear and sane and…brotherly.

 

“Keith?” he sounded genuinely concerned. “What did I say?”

 

Keith looked away so that Shiro wouldn’t have to see his face.

 

“Nothing,” he said.


End file.
